Panik House | Review
by Crites | Buy at Amazon
After the lush ghost story of BANGKOK HAUNTED I was eagerly looking forward to Panik House's next offering, OMEN. However in this case my expectations were not met; I don't know, maybe the starring roles of "real life Thai pop sensations D2B" had something to do with it...
We open with what is presumably a flashback, a young boy in a dirt yard banging a tin plate and calling out for "Little One" to come and eat. The boy's two older brothers appear, only to dismiss their younger sibling's concern. "Don't call her. She's just gone. Don't you get it? If she doesn't want to live with us, stop worrying about her." This upsets the younger boy, who cries into the opening credits wondering, "When will we meet again? When will you be back?"
In present time, three young men are having difficulty with their graphic design job. As Dan drives home to fix a bungled assignment, the skipping of his CD player distracts him enough to think he sees someone in the road, which his car suddenly leaves and crashes into a tree. He awakens in a strange house with a strange old woman watching over him. As he leaves the house, the old woman asks him when they'll meet again...
Hotheaded young Beam has a bit of a mishap on his way home as well; as he waits at a traffic light a flower pot comes crashing down onto the hood of his car. The flower pot's extremely attractive young owner, Orm, comes rushing down to see if everything is okay, and after yelling at each other for a minute or two Beam takes off... with her phone number.
Between scenes another flashback takes place, this one of a tiny dog being hit by a car.
The next day as the third member of the group, Big, takes Dan to get his car, he relates the first of what will become a series of interactions he has with a young street urchin involving the swapping of toy cars for figurines of small dogs. Once at the house the old lady flat-out spooks Big straightaway, and her cryptic comments this time around bewilder Dan even more. Especially when a veiled warning proves to be true some time later when Dan gets stuck in an elevator. He returns on a dark and stormy night to question the old woman, but she continues to speak in riddles and act genuinely freaky. Beam misses out on these suspenseful events, instead paying a visit to his new lady friend who is opening up a café near a construction zone.
In another flashback the three boys play happily with the little dog, which they've apparently nursed back to health.
Big loses another round of sleight-of-hand with the street kid, forfeiting another toy car, but on the following evening the boy is hit by a car and badly injured. Big follows him to the hospital, where he learns that the child has suffered severe internal injuries and is now in a coma. Visiting him again later, Big tucks one of his toy cars into the boy's curled hand.
Another of the old woman's prophecies is fulfilled when Dan wolfs down a bowl of noodles so quickly that he nearly chokes to death. He visits her home yet again about the source of her knowledge, and again her comments raise more questions than they answer. She does however have an 'old' photograph of Orm, and offers up some disturbingly vague remarks about the girl. When Dan tries to bring this up in a roundabout way by asking Beam about his girlfriend Beam becomes overly defensive, even disinviting his friends to the opening of Orm's café.
Which doesn't go particularly well anyway; the industrial-strength clatter of heavy construction drives away more patrons than it attracts, and Orm already begins to consider selling the place. As Beam goes down to the work site to raise hell with the laborers Dan takes Big to the old woman's house for a look at the photo. This time they see something Dan missed - Beam is also in the picture. The old lady appears out of nowhere, saying that Beam is the one who took the picture, just before he died. "Today."
Failing to reach Beam on his cell phone, Big and Dan rush over to the coffee shop and arrive just as an immense pallet of concrete siding falls to the ground when a crane cable snaps, missing Beam by inches. The recoil of the broken cable however causes another much more serious accident.
The old lady's home is visited a final time where yet again more questions than answers are found, the little boy who was hit by a car turns out to be a little girl, and something of the nature of reincarnation, bonding and sacrifice is revealed, changing the entire history of the story.
I know that's a little vague, but then again so is the point of the plot. It's all rather touching, but it seems aimed more at enticing young female fans of 'D2B' into alternating bouts of weeping and cheering than entertaining a discerning audience; the film seems much more of an after-school ghost story than the supernatural thriller it's made out to be. A mildly intriguing, and at 83 minutes somewhat too long, tale of how fates and lives are intertwined, Omen is crafted with very little atmosphere or suspense. The lack of direct action combined with the constant running back and forth to the old lady's house is frustrating, as is the questionable emotionalism of the storyline. And with the lead roles all played by young pop stars, well this import has 'chick flick' written all over it.
Ah well, at least you still get the special insert card and sticker...
Bonus features consist of trailers, poster and still galleries, production notes and "The D2B Story," which tells of the rise of the film stars' super pop boy band and, eerily enough, the ongoing "medical nightmare" Big continues to endure after a real-life car accident (it wasn't so much the crash as the polluted water he swallowed afterward that did him in). Also included are band member profiles, a tribute to Big and fan letters from around the world.
